Kristin Becker's DTC Classes at WSU

For this project, I interviewed my mother, Veronica Krist, who was born in 1968 in Tucson, Arizona. Instead of immediately addressing the theme that I had prepared to discuss, I wanted to begin the interview by providing a brief background of her introduction into digital technology and the Internet, as she had a rather interesting introduction into web coding and design and manages her own website for her business. Initially, the most prominent theme that I had intended to focus on was her experience in learning about and teaching herself the skills that she currently possesses. However, the conversation naturally began with her introduction to computers and the Internet.

She recalls her first experiences with the Internet, during which she jokes about finding “the end of the Internet.” In other words, unlike today where there is a nearly limitless amount of information that can be found with a simple search, she would attempt to open a page before finding out that it simply did not exist. While she claims that her work is not professional and contains a number of errors, she provides an explanation for why she made the decisions that she has.

One thing that surprised me about this interview was that when I asked one question, the interviewee tended to answer more than one of my prepared questions in her answer; thus, I ran out of prepared questions to ask quickly and mainly relied on follow-up questions that I thought of in the moment. I also found the Audacity program, which I had never used before, to be surprisingly easy to navigate for this project, considering that I was only using it to cut and add specific pieces of audio, as well as to remove any excess background noise. My only in-depth experience with audio editing before this project had been using Adobe Premiere Pro to place, edit, and add effects to sounds, and I was concerned that the Audacity program would contain a vastly different interface that would take several hours to become accustomed to.

Originally, I was planning on interviewing my grandma over Christmas break, however, there were complications and our plans fell through. The other person I was thinking about interviewing was my old house mom, Suz. I remembered her telling me that she used to work at a telephone company when she was younger, so, I thought she would be perfect for my interview. Going into the interview I had prepared a list of questions; phones being the main theme. One thing that surprised me is that I didn’t even get close to asking all the questions I had prepared. Often times I found our conversation going in a different direction than I anticipated. We ended up having a 40-minute conversation, however we strayed off topic a few times and ended up talking about politics and social media. When I was going into this conversation I did not think phones were going to be such a broad topic. Our conversation started getting general once we began talking about the impact smart phones has on today’s society. The phones that Suz grew up working on are totally different than the cellphones we have now. It was interesting to hear how she has seen technology advance, and her view on it because she has seen technology grow in a very different way. Suz has been a house mom for the past twenty or so years now, so she has been able to observe the different relationships each generation has with technology, specifically with phones. The cellphones we have now are so advanced that we can do almost anything that can be done on a computer. Since the smart phones we have now have so many functions, this made the topic pretty general. The impact such a small device can have on the world is incredible. Smart phones have changed our society and it will continue to change the world and advance. In my 4-5 minute interview, I chose to focus on Suz’s career journey along with what she thinks the future of technology will be like. I set up my interview in a past, present, future format while the main focus was on phones. I thought a subsequent order would make the interview easier to follow. I tried to fit all the best ideas into the interview while making it still sound smooth.

Picture of Michael Lentz 2018, taken by Rachel Lentz.

I interviewed my father over the theme of transportation and the technology of transportation and vehicles. I viewed him as an ideal candidate as he has worked in the trucking industry for a large part of his adult life and has a lot of experience with vehicles. I was assured I would be able to instigate a conversation that felt natural. I have a close relationship with my father and both of us felt comfortable talking together. I set up the interview in a comfortable place, my Grandmother’s house. This was to make sure that this exercise was guided but also free to evolve as we spoke. The living room was also ideal as it was a well-padded room that helped decrease echo. However, it did have the forgotten drawback of having a grandfather clock that chimes sitting on the mantel. It was mildly inconvenient having to edit the interruptions of the chimes out from the interview. Overall, the interview went along the lines I expected. Mostly these were stories about my father’s work I had been told before. These stories are interesting, so I did not mind listening to them. The main part I was impressed and surprised about was his technical knowledge. My father knows his profession well and was able to recite practical information I would otherwise have no knowledge of. He has garnered a lot of knowledge over the years that is well used in this profession. As well, in our interview we were able to discuss technology and its future concisely and from different angles for a broader discussion. We broached many topics from serious ones to more lighthearted discussions. I tried to condense my father’s interview as much as possible and keep the main points of our discussion intact. I wanted to balance the inclusion of valuable information from an experienced perspective about the trucking industry with personal stories from my dad. The stories were interesting, and I tried to save them for the end after a more focused conversation. The technological discussion was fun as well as we were able to discuss the effects of technology and its relationship to existing social structures and industries. The most prevalent themes of the technology that we focused on was the change that he had seen in the trucking industry and their various uses, as well as perspectives for the future. We discussed the merits of the evolving tech in trucking and how it both helps and hinders the people using it. These opinions and stories are from the first-hand experience of someone in the field and relate to the actual practical meshing of technology with peoples lives in general. For this project I edited it using adobe audacity as it was the most readily available program used in the creativity suit and in the Avery computer lab on campus. It is a nice program that is relatively easy to learn how to use as well. It fit my purposes well overall and has been beneficial to learn as I am getting my DTC minor and see the value of learning how to operate these programs well. I hope both the personality of my father and the technical and social stances he had on trucking were able to shine through overall in the interview. This was my main goal and it is a worthy one as, like Story Corps message states, people want to be listened to and their stories deserve to be recorded and recorded well.

The interview I conducted was with my father which meant that conversation flowed very easily. When anyone asks what my dad does for a living, I can always tell them the general idea of his business, but other than that, I am always at a loss for words. Because I was intrigued by the details of his business, I was able to ask him questions not only to get good material for the project, but also because I was genuinely interested. This, along with the good relationship we share, was the reason the interview flowed so easily. However, some of the things he said very much surprised me. When asking him about cyber security as a problem with advancing technology, he told me about a incident that happened a few years ago. He told me that a virus on one of his customers computers caused a hacker to be able to obtain my fathers bank account information, and get away with stealing millions of dollars worth of product. When anything substantial like this happens with my fathers business, I usually know about it, however, I have never heard this story before and it was very surprising to hear.

The theme I used was the positive and the negative aspects of technology on my fathers business. I know that technology has obviously made his business more efficient, and made it possible to do things that his company couldn’t do before technology. However, I wanted to know if the positive aspects of technology outweighed the negative ones. These included a larger workload and cyber security concerns. The way I edited the interview followed this theme. I started off asking him some of the positive aspects of technology on his business and learned that his company revenue increased almost 10 fold over the past 50 years. I then asked him about the negative aspects of technology on his business and learned about some of the security risks it imposes. I also learned that at night, his biggest customers in China are wide awake because of the time difference, so without the internet, he would not be able to communicate with them. I then asked him weather or not the positives outweighed the negatives. He told me that without technology, he does not think his company would be around today, meaning that he needs technology in order to have a business at all.

For this oral history interview, I chose to sit down with my father, Greg Snow, who works for HomeStreet Bank in Seattle as the Vice President of Production Administration. I felt that my father would be a good interviewee because he works on projects including: selecting loan origination systems, analyzing data volume and profitability, and developing employee referral systems which highly revolves around the need to have his iPhone on his person.

This interview process went smoothly because my father was comfortable during this conversation and had a lot of good things to say in relation to the topic we focused on. I was surprised with not only everything he had to say about iPhones and how communication devices have changed so rapidly leading up to this current generation, but also how relaxed and easy it was to talk about this subject. Many different topics came up which made this oral history interview so hard to edit because my father would go into story mode. He went in detail about his work and all the many forms of technology that he uses including email, pagers, voicemail, and letters.

Originally, my interview with him was 26 minutes long before editing so I was nervous that I would take out all of the good information that he was sharing with me about iPhones. Mr. Snow shared his history with communication devices including landlines, his first cellphone that he bought, and what life was like for him before the advancements made in technology. My father, being the social and talkative man that he is, made numerous funny jokes that he wanted my classmates to hear, but unfortunately, I had to edit them out due to the length of this interview. Mr. Snow commented on one of the most used iPhone applications for his company, Webex, that he and his colleagues use to collaborate and have meetings. Many of the people he talks to includes those who seek out loan information and are not physically in the office, so the ability to communicate with his iPhone is mandatory.

The most prominent themes that surfaced in relation to the technology that were focused on included instant messaging and the iPhone applications, which he and his coworkers use to get information to each other when employees were out of the office and during meetings. I decided to edit this interview into the audio story that I turned in because I wanted to make sure that the main focus was on iPhones and how he uses them to communicate in his work field. I learned more than I thought I would during this interview. I have heard many ‘back in my day’ stories from my father in relation to cellphones, but it was really interesting to learn how he felt about the changes, including the pros and cons to the iPhone. I decided to lean my focus mainly on the iPhone because my father has been using his iPhone 5 since it came out in 2012. My curiosity about this topic arose from the fact that my father does not update his cellphones often; he keeps them for a longer period of time than the average 21st century individual. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about technology from the 80s along with his opinion of the iPhone and the usefulness of it in his work environment.